Wagering game machine makers continually provide new and entertaining games. One way of increasing entertainment value associated with casino-style wagering games (e.g., video slots, video poker, video black jack, and the like) includes offering a variety of base games and bonus events. However, despite the variety of base games and bonus events, players often lose interest in repetitive wagering gaming content. In order to maintain player interest, wagering game machine makers frequently update wagering game content with new game themes, game settings, bonus events, game software, and other electronic data. Within the gaming industry linked bonus/award systems, such as progressive systems, are widely used to increase player excitement. The progressive awards are generally funded as a function of total coin-in from each participating gaming terminal (GT). A gaming terminal is a wagering game machine with which a player directly interacts to participate in a wagering game. In current typical progressive award products, the progressive system is independent from the GTs and from the casino's slot accounting system. The progressive award system monitors the coin-in on the participating GTs to determine contributions to the award pool. Current progressive-award products have independent hardware and network infrastructure and generally use proprietary protocols to communicate with the attached GTs. This approach typically is costly to design, implement, install, and maintain. Additionally, in current approaches, the system infers its award contributions by monitoring activity on participating GTs. While this approach is generally accurate, errors or differences may occur between the progressive award system and the slot accounting system. This requires periodic reconciliation between these independent systems. Further, participating GTs are associated with a particular progressive award (or group of related awards) in advance. Consequently, there is a need to provide for seamless integration of base wagering games, bonus wager games, game themes, game settings, game software, progressive awards, and other electronic data to ensure an attractive gaming experience.